I agree with this fella.

Our lass, and I'm proud of her.

lucky stool .....

France is the second largest market after america, for the consumption of macdonalds. When I go in there for a coffee and the free wifi it is packed. The schools now have classes to try and educate the kids to eat traditional foods but most feel it is too late. France has the childhood obesity issues to come.
rlhttps://www.zomppa.com/2011/08/25/france-the-world%E2%80%99s-second-largest-market-for-mcdonald%E2%80%99s/rl

rlhttps://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2009/06/how_mcdonalds_conquered_france.htmlrl

Extracts from the following link.

"Some of the reasons for the increase in obesity are those that plague the United States and much of Europe

"While adult obesity is rising about 6 percent a year in France, among children the rate of growth is 17 percent. At that rate the French could be - quelle horreur - as fat as Americans by the year 2020. (More than 65 percent of the population in the United States is considered overweight or obese.)"


"Findus, the frozen-food giant known for its breaded fish filets, filmed ordinary people eating over a period of time and was shocked by the result. Contrary to the myth that the French spend hours sitting around the table savouring small portions of several courses, the films showed them eating in front of their television sets, while on the phone and even eating alone. In fact, the average French meal, which lasted 88 minutes 25 years ago, lasts 38 minutes today."

rlhttps://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/french_fat.htmlrl

I was meaning the culture rather than individuals. Been there, done that myself etc.

But the point is that we don't need it. Why have we developed into a nation that now needs to spend a fortune going to the gym etc?




Or they 'fail' because serious gym work (and other exercise), combined with restricted diet, set the body's 'controls' (if you will) to a mode that then makes it very difficult to maintain the attained physical state when you return to 'normal' living – and I do mean a basically sensible diet and a reasonable amount of daily movement. I've been down the gym route – more than once – and combined serious weights work with aerobic exercise and diet.

You don't have to eat badly once you start eating 'normally' again to put weight back on.

And indeed, we start to ask what this 'bad' eating is.



I suspect that's the recession.



Cut calories, cut fat, fill up with complex carbs. This isn't the faddy stuff – not 'just eat grapefruits for a fortnight to cut fat' or similar – this has been mainstream advice for years. In the 1970s, it was standardly said that for weight loss, you needed to cut to 1,000kcals per day.

As I've mentioned before, I was later told by a GP to cut to 800 – because I could never get quite below the upper weight for my height. He didn't check my health or fitness (this was during the period when I was exercising heavily), so the weight that I was carrying in the form of lean tissue wasn't considered, for instance.



Indeed. Trans and hydrogenated are bloody poisons. To add

TBF, I think French schools have been having those classes for quite some time, IIRC.

38 minutes would still be longer than many in the UK. But yes, this is deeply, deeply depressing. Can't we just ban effing MacDonalds and KFC, along with loads more of the junk that has been foisted on us from the US, from litigation culture to school proms and aggressive marketing for Halloween?

But in the meantime, that doesn't disprove what I was posting earlier – indeed, it bears it out. And to go back to Rock God's points, it still raises the question of why the French do not currently require a mass gym culture.

We might not 'need' to use gyms to keep fit, but some people actually prefer to. And, as for paying a fortune, I pay £15 a month for my (off peak) gym membership - less than half of what most people spend on a single night out, or about the cost of a takeaway meal. Hardly a fortune, and money well spent if it does the job.



I don't know where you're getting this from, but it's not right for the vast majority of us. Or at least not for the vast majority of clients I have dealt with. Perhaps your personal experience differs, but if you have been given a sensible training programme, together with a healthy eating plan, there's no reason you should need to 'return to normal living'. Or, more appropriately, any definition of 'normal living' should include regular exercise and a healthy diet. If you're flogging yourself in the gym, and/or restricting your calories too severely, then you suddenly stop and return to what you were doing before, of course there's a good chance you'll put weight back on over time. I would never advise someone to change their exercise/eating habits as a short term measure in order to achieve some pre-determined goal (though setting goals is important). My approach is to encourage people to make long term changes that will benefit them (hopefully) for the rest of their lives. Exercise, in whatever form, should be a habit we all get into (unless we're physically incapable). Same with healthy eating. That's why I never tell anyone to go 'on a diet', preferring instead to identify changes to a person's eating habits that they have a realistic chance of maintaining in the longer term.

The key is balance. Work out (whether in a gym or not) at a safe, sustainable intensity for 30-40 minutes, 4-5 times per week and eat a healthy, balanced diet, and there won't be a problem. Cut down to minus calories and kill yourself in the gym for two hours a day, and there almost certainly will.



Processed foods, too much alcohol, too many calories for your activity level, to give a few examples.



This isn't mainstream advice now. It's many years out of date, in fact. Most knowledgeable people will now tell you to create a small calorie deficit from a combination of diet and exercise, and combine this with a balanced diet including all essential nutrients. There are calculators out there that enable you to, very roughly, work out how many calories you need to consume to maintain your current weight. As a rule of thumb, I would advise no more than a 500 calorie per day deficit (approx 250 from diet and 250 from exercise) off this figure for steady, sustainable weight loss. We've come a long way since the 70s, and I don't know of anyone who knows what they're talking about who would advise eating only 1000 calories per day.

As regards carbs, the advice now is to eat low-GI carbs, as opposed to 'complex carbs'. Things like white bread and white pasta contain 'complex carbs', but their wholemeal equivalents are much better for prolonging satiety and releasing energy slowly. They don't produce the same insulin spikes as high GI carbs, and therefore don't promote fat storage in the same way.



Then your GP is an idiot. I have had a similar experience with a practice nurse. I have a BMI of around 27, and she told me I needed to lose weight. When I pointed out that my bodyfat was only around 11%, she just mumbled something about 'still needing to shed a few pounds', then promptly changed the subject. But because some people are still giving out poor/out of date advice, doesn't mean that it's 'mainstream advice'.




I don't think we have a 'mass gym culture'. Of all the people I know, I can think of only one or two who use a gym on a regular basis. I'd imagine that a very small percentage of the overall population are regular gym goers. That said, the gym works for many people and I think it's often unfairly derided as somehow being a 'false' way of getting fit.

I wouldn't dispute this. But we do have a gym/exercise culture where we didn't have one only around 30-40 years ago.



There are, though problems with a lot of gyms demanding a year's money up front.



I walk a lot. Indeed, that's pretty much what I was referring to in terms of the French example – they walk more than us in the course of everyday life, but don't have the same level of gym use etc.



I'm an old person, remember! 8.93896484375:10